The 3 Shifts Which Shaped Hospitality in 2025

2025 was a bit of a year.

In what began as something approaching normal for those in hospitality, things, as they often do, were quick to change—fast with those trademark curveballs that the universe tends to pitch us when we think we know the lay of the land.

There were, of course, notches in the win column. There has to be for an industry to keep going. But some of those in the lose column hit harder than expected.

And if this were any other industry, one not so used to shattering through the barriers, again, and again and again, year after year, you would harbour some concern for the future—a way out for the everyman operator, or the dreamer with eyes on expansion, or the juggernaut trying to keep the whole thing from giving in to its own mass.

But this is hopso we’re talking about here. The perennial underdog. The scrappy victor of so many lost causes. We don’t know when to quit.

Thank God.

1. Rising costs
2. Investment in data
3. An unlikely hero

Rising costs

There were the ever-rising costs. Not just of goods, but of living itself.

The nation, as a whole, saw their budgets hit hard from every angle, the supermarket checkout being the major one. And, as is the case when the purse strings must tighten, the first casualties are the things that make life life.

Those little luxuries. A coffee and a sweet treat after the school run. A cafe breakfast the morning after the night before. A table at the place you’ve been threatening to go to the past few months. 

Compound this, and pretty soon the balance sheet can begin to tell a grim tale.

But what’s notable is that this hasn’t been answered with aggression from the industry.

Venues showed a cooler head. They still adjusted prices, but they did it more carefully and with greater intention. When customers are being hit from all angles, hospitality operators became a light in the darkness, an island in a sea of corporate greed.

Indeed, it was the larger operators who operated with more caution than their smaller counterparts because with scale comes complexity. When a venue is bigger and a brand more established, change inherently carries more risk. Stability, in these cases, becomes part of the greater strategy.

And this strategy, this focus on long term stability, was shown in where hospitality operators decided to funnel their funds.

Investment in data

Contactless terminals, mobile Tap to Pay, integrated POS payments and AI-driven tools became core infrastructure for the hospitality operator.

In 2025, tech was tasked to improve output. Cultivate faster service, cleaner workflows, better visibility and more informed decision-making. We found ourselves navigating a golden age of data, and knowing how to harness it and use it to improve the experience of both venues and customers alike became a battlefront of sorts.

This is an industry ever-changing, ever-innovating, but famously low on time. No sooner has an idea presented itself, the next task rears its ugly head and demands attention and the to-do pile grows ever larger.

And who was the hero at the centre of this revolution?

An unlikely hero

Payments.

Sat at the heart of it all because they touch every table, every shift, every bill.

With the data collected from a simple transaction, venues began to understand their customers and themselves on levels they couldn’t previously. And that’s because every transaction carries so much of it: spend, timing, table size, payment method, tipping behaviour. The list goes on. And when analysed properly, this data reveals how a venue actually moves. You can now course-correct in real time, instead of waiting until weeks or months later.

And this unprecedented access to data became something available to operations of all sizes and was a key player in the industry. It’s no longer the realm of the big players. Smaller venues were suddenly able to see the drivers behind their revenue and could tailor their modus operandi to take advantage of them.

Cafes showed this shift most clearly. 

With a smaller share of revenue tied to dine-in, they leaned into pickup, pre-packaged meals and merchandise, effectively operating as micro-marketplaces as much as eateries. Fridges filled with ready-to-go lunches, shelves stocked with house-made goods, and branded merch all became meaningful contributors rather than the previous, nice-to-have side projects.

They became monuments to local pride.

Restaurants moved more cautiously, still drawing the largest proportion of revenue from dine-in experiences. But even here, diversification gained momentum. 

Special events, premium takeaway, delivery and curated at-home offerings began to play a larger role, extending the restaurant experience beyond the table.

Bars found opportunity in retrospection. 

With built-in flexibility and social energy, many leaned into events like live music, themed nights and private functions turning what were once occasional add-ons into deliberate revenue streams. 

In doing so, they brought us something that has been sorely missed in recent years. A social hub for a community.

All of this points to an outcome that is clear as day, once you take a step back and view the greater picture, and that is that 2025 restored humanity into hospitality.

Staff that aren’t tethered to terminals or buried in reconciliation, are free to focus on people. Conversations aren’t rushed. Problems are handled with a calmness, a level head, because the people with the solutions have been allowed a better focus, and because of these honed focusses, energy lasts longer through busy services.

Better data, it seems, has restored the human touch.